I read an interesting article that discussed the importance of targeting and bounce rates and it got me to thinking about the clients that I have had, past and present and the buckets of money I have seen thrown away. So, I decided to put a list together of 10 ways you or your client may be wasting money they could be paying you:

1. Stop sending paid traffic to your home!
   1. Your homepage is rarely the page your potential customers are looking for. If I am searching for �buy sony flatscreen 1080p� PLEASE send me to a page with sony flat screen tv�s on it!
   2. Check your homepage�s bounce rate. It is 60% than you should only be sending people searching for �sitename.com� to that page otherwise, you are throwing at least 60% of your money away. Why do I say at least? Because if you are sending all your paid traffic to your homepage than you probably haven�t optimized your paid search ads and are just looking for a high click through rate.
2. Stop duplicating terms in your paid search accounts
   1. It never ceases to amaze me when clients are using the same keyword in multiple ad groups with the same geo-targeting and timing. Don�t do this
3. Have goals for your website
   1. Set goals for your website. �I want to make money.� Isn�t a sufficient goal. Come up with trackable metrics to get you there so you can optimize your website to eventually make you some more money.
   2. Publishing sites - # of page views, repeat visitors, high CPM.
   3. Ecommerce � lifetime value
   4. Lead-gen sites are a monster in and of themselves. If you generate leads so that they become sales then focusing on the lead only is going to inhibit you from making money. Remember, unless you are selling leads, they don� t make you any money until they become a sale.
4. Don�t cut the long-tail
   1. If you aren�t tracking performance over-time, you are probably missing all of your long-tail terms. Don�t cut terms that are attracting people in the educational phase of the sales-cycle. If you market to them differently you can increase your conversion rate over time. Don�t cut them just because these phrases take a little longer to convert - MARKET TO THEM DIFFERENTLY. These are long sales cycle leads
5. Use negative keywords in your paid search campaigns
   1. This may sound basic, but if you aren�t using negative keywords than you are paying for traffic that will NEVER make you a dollar, pound or euro. If you have paid-search clients or use paid search and using mostly broad match than you really need to spend some time investigating exactly what terms are being clicked on.
6. Learn what terms lead to conversion and optimize your site accordingly
   1. Welcome to the beauty of the internet and web analytics. You can actually tell how people get to your site, what they do there and if they are making you money. It�s brilliant. So why are you optimizing your site based on what you think will work well?
7. Stop making creative decisions based on what your boss thinks is a good idea.
   1. See point 6. We have the ability to test and optimize, which means we can run multiple ad creatives (banner and search) and see what drives the greatest revenue rather than based on the CxO�s affinity to the color blue. Back your decisions with data
8. Test, test, test and SPLIT TEST!
   1. See point 7. Products like Google website optimizer and Omniture�s Test and Target (formerly Offermatica) can optimize your landing pages based on conversions. There is no excuse for not testing your landing pages and assuming that your designers first try is always correct. In all likelihood it is not optimal and assuming it is will make an ass out you but not me because I�m split testing
9. Track how changes to your website affect your bottom line
   1. If designers, programmers, your kids or whomever are making website changes that affect your business� especially your homepage � you should be recording that this is being done and how this is affecting organic placement and conversions. If there is no tracking there is no accountability.
10. Know what your users are clicking on
    1. Heatmaps and click analysis tools, like Crazy Egg are great at letting you know what your users are clicking on and responding to. Using this information to optimize page layout should help you to make the most of the traffic that you have

Originally published on SEO Chicks

Firstly, let me say, I�m excited to be here with a group of such talented women. Secondly, the the two sentence intro on me is that I�ve been doing SEO, ppc and analytics in the forex industry and for myself at lvlogic for a little over 3 years. I can often be found hanging out at the bar with several of the guys from IM-NY talking shop over a ketel one on the rocks or a nice glass of wine. The bar is also where I met Lisa (running theme possibly) and after several drinks, a few games of craps and some tequila and eggs, she asked me to be a chicklet. So, here is everything you ever wanted to know about how to build a brand in 5 easy steps (more or less).

As a new business starting out, getting market share can be an overwhelming task. You need more than just an out of the box website and big dreams. You need a game plan.

How to make one is what we are going to discuss through research and development of a story that sells, how to rank for your brand name and what to do next.

Remember, you may not be Coca-Cola, but that doesn�t mean you shouldn�t think about branding your product from the start.

1. Competitive Research

I know what you are thinking � why am I doing competitive research? I am branding my product not trying to get links. Competitive research is one of the most, if not ‘the’ most important (and often overlooked) steps when you start any online project.

Figure out who the competition is and what they are doing. Learn the key terms for your niche and make a list of who is ranking for them. Once you discover who your key competitors are, figure out what terms they are ranking for (I recommend using www.compete.com) and what you can do better.

The keywords give you direction and online are an important ingredient in branding. Knowing where your competitors are getting their traffic shows you what is in the mind of potential visitors. Gear your site to these queries and you position yourself, over time, in the minds of your potential customers. If they always see you everytime they search for what you offer you become associated with the terms and all they suggest to the searchers.

2. What is your story?

Now that you have completed Step 1 and found out who your competition is and what your future clients think about when looking for your niche, you should have an idea of what stories the competition is telling and to a degree what your clients are looking for. Remember consumers buy the stories behind the product, not the product itself. You as a new brand are at a clear advantage here. You have a bird�s eye view of your competition and where they are succeeding and where they are faltering. Now figure out what your story is and how to sell it better than anyone else.

3. Create your content

As we all know, in the online world content is king (and Google is the emperor, but that�s another article). Build content based around the key terms in your niche and become an authority. This will take time, work and resources, but it will pay off. Do not try and make one page that adddresses all the keywords. Make individual pages for each keyword (or at most three keywords a page). This gives you more pages - which adds to the size of the site and the impact it will have in Google, as well as possibly pushing you up in search results for many keywords - thus grabbing clients who are looking for your products through different perspectives.

It is good to remember that people rarely share how they get information, but they do share the information.

4. Rank for your brand name

Make sure you rank highly for your brand name. If your name is something generic that will be near impossible to rank for, change it. No, seriously, change your company�s name now. It will be cheaper to re-file some paperwork than it will be to lose out on all those sales because no one can find your site.

Whether you are a small company (and even if you are a large company) you should also be taking advantage of social media and using it to help dominate the SERPs for your brand name and brand specific products. Create and interlink various social media profiles like linkedin, naymz, squidoo, and myspace.

When choosing a name remember to consider something easy to remember and that Google likes domain names that are a reflection of the search term. In other words, you can rank well with a domain that is the same as a search term (try doing searches and see the domain name there should be a listing that matches keyword and domain).

5. Promote brand loyalists

Create frequent visitor/buyer discounts and rewards programs. This is where the cell phone companies have it backwards. They offer all kinds of promotions to new customers to try to entice them to make the switch over rather than creating customer loyalty programs to keep clients. This is why most people have no brand loyalty when it comes to cell phones and they often leave when their contract is up because another brand is offering them the best new phones free if the jump ship. Don�t let this happen to your brand. Keep customers happy.

This all seems fairly straight forward and it is. It just takes time and commitment, which if you have, it will pay off.

Article first published on SEO Chicks